Experts Sound Alarm: AI Therapy’s Data Risks and Limitations Exposed

Digital shrinks face mounting skepticism as security flaws surface.

Privacy Pitfalls

Your deepest secrets might be training someone's LLM—therapy bots collect more personal data than a hedge fund's insider trading spreadsheet. Encryption gaps leave sensitive conversations vulnerable to breaches that'd make a crypto exchange blush.

Clinical Boundaries

Algorithms can't replicate human empathy—they're about as warm as a Bitcoin miner's GPU. Studies show AI consistently misses nuanced emotional cues that human therapists catch instantly. When patients spiral into crisis, these systems default to scripted responses that'd fail any psychiatric evaluation.

Regulatory Void

No FDA approval required for mental health algorithms—they operate in a wild west tighter than DeFi regulation. Venture capitalists pour billions into unproven platforms while actual clinicians question the ethics. It's the latest 'disruptive' tech trying to monetize human suffering without solving it.

Experts question AI therapy’s limits and data safety

“Human-to-human connection is the only way we can really heal properly,” says Dr. Nigel Mulligan, a psychotherapy lecturer at Dublin City University. He argues that chatbots miss the nuance, intuition, and bond a person brings, and are not equipped for acute crises such as suicidal thoughts or self-harm.

Even the promise of constant access gives him pause. Some clients wish for faster appointments, he says, but waiting can have value. “Most times that’s really good because we have to wait for things,” he says. “People need time to process stuff.”

Privacy is another pressure point, along with the long-term effects of seeking guidance from software.

“The problem [is] not the relationship itself but … what happens to your data,” says Kate Devlin, a professor of artificial intelligence and society at King’s College London.

She notes that AI services do not follow the confidentiality rules that govern licensed therapists. “My big concern is that this is people confiding their secrets to a big tech company and that their data is just going out. They are losing control of the things that they say.”

U.S. cracks down on AI therapy amid fears of misinformation

In December, the largest U.S. psychologists’ group urged federal regulators to shield the public from “deceptive practices” by unregulated chatbots, citing cases where AI characters posed as licensed providers.

In August, Illinois joined Nevada and Utah in curbing the use of AI in mental-health services to “protect patients from unregulated and unqualified AI products” and to “protect vulnerable children amid the rising concerns over AI chatbot use in youth mental health services.”

Meanwhile, as per Cryptopolitan’s report, Texas’s attorney general launched a civil investigation into Meta and Character.AI over allegations that their chatbots impersonated licensed therapists and mishandled user data. Moreover, last year, parents also sued Character.AI for pushing their kids into depression.

Scott Wallace, a clinical psychologist and former clinical innovation director at Remble, says it is uncertain “whether these chatbots deliver anything more than superficial comfort.”

He warns that people may believe they have formed a therapeutic bond “with an algorithm that, ultimately, doesn’t reciprocate actual human feelings.”

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